William Faulkner (1897-1963)
Faulkner is likely to appear on the GRE because of his distinctive style. Also, if you ever see the names Quentin Compson, of if you see the surname Snopes, you’re looking at Faulkner. I won’t put a summary for all Faulkner’s works here, but know that the most likely candidates for the GRE are The Sound and the Fury, and the short story “A Rose for Emily.”
“Sound and the Fury”
The four parts of the novel relate many of the same episodes, each from a different point of view and therefore with emphasis on different themes and events. This interweaving and nonlinear structure makes any true synopsis of the novel difficult, especially since the narrators are all unreliable in their own way, making their accounts not necessarily trustworthy at all times.
The general outline of the story is the decline of the Compson family, a once noble southern family descended from civil war hero General Compson. The family falls victim to those vices which Faulkner believed were responsible for the problems in the reconstructed South: racism, greed, selfishness and, ultimately, psychological impotence. Especially in regard to the latter, the novel has been often described as having the thematic structure of a Greek tragedy. Over the course of the thirty years or so related in the novel, the family falls into financial ruin, loses its religious faith and the respect of the town of Jefferson, and many of them die tragically.
A famous passage that may appear on the GRE, it is narrated by Quentin:
“When the shadow of the sash appeared in the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it.”
**The title of the novel is taken from Macbeth’s soliloquy in act 5, scene 5 of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth:
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
”Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing…”
“A Light in August”
The narrative structure consists of three connected plot-strands. The first strand tells the story of Lena Grove, a young pregnant woman who is trying to find the father, Lucas Burch, of her unborn child. With that purpose she leaves her home town and walks several hundred miles afoot to Jefferson, a town in Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha county. There she is supported by Byron Bunch, an employee in the planing mill who falls in love with Lena and hopes to marry her. Bunch keeps secret that Lucas Burch is hiding in town under the alias Joe Brown. Lena is a simple child of nature, representing positive human qualities like innocence and endurance. Her journey in August and the birth of her child are symbolic of the eternal cycle of nature.
The narrative plot of Lena’s story is also circular; it builds a framework around the two other plot-strands. One of these is the story of the enigmatic character Joe Christmas.
One day he comes to the planing mill in Jefferson and asks for a job. The work at the planing mill is just a cover up for his illegal alcohol business. He has a sexual relationship with Joanna Burden, who is descended from a formerly powerful abolitionist family. She lets Joe live in the cabin behind her house. Joanna Burden’s brother and grandfather, two civil right activists, were both gunned down at daylight. Joanna Burden continues her ancestors’ struggle for Black emancipation, which makes her an outsider in the society of Jefferson, much like Christmas.
Her relationship with Christmas begins rather disturbingly, with an ambiguous episode in which sexual abuse is suggested, and it ends in disaster. As a result of sexual frustration and the beginning of menopause, she turns to religion. At the climax of her relation to Christmas, she tries to force him, by threatening him with a gun, to admit publicly his black ancestry and to join a black law firm. But the old gun jams and Christmas gets away. Joanna Burden is murdered soon thereafter. Her throat is slit and she is nearly decapitated. Her body is carried outside and her house is set on fire. The murder was presumably committed by Joe Christmas, but this is not explicitly narrated; one could argue that Burch murdered her. It appears that Lucas Burch/Joe Brown may have at least set the house on fire.
Thanks to a tip-off by Lucas Burch/Joe Brown, Christmas’ previous business partner in the moon-shining venture and the father of Lena’s child, Christmas is caught. During his unsuccessful escape attempt, Christmas is shot and castrated by a national Guardsman named Percy Grimm.
The third plot strand tells the story of Reverend Gail Hightower. He is obsessed by the past adventures of his Confederate grandfather, who was killed while stealing a few chickens from a farmer’s shed. Hightower’s community dislikes him because of his sermons about his dead grandfather, and because of the scandal surrounding his personal life: his wife committed adultery, and later killed herself, turning the town’s community against Hightower and effectively turning him into a pariah. The only character who does not turn his back on the Reverend is Byron Bunch, who visits Hightower from time to time. Bunch also tries to convince the Reverend to give the imprisoned Christmas an alibi, but Hightower initially refuses. When Christmas escapes from police custody he runs to Hightower’s house where and tries to hide. Hightower then accepts Byron’s suggestion, but it is too late as Percy Grimm is close behind.
At the end of the novel, the Reverend helps Lena to deliver her baby, a circumstance that helps him break his inner isolation and makes him feel his approaching death.
“A Rose for Emily”
A Rose for Emily is the story of an eccentric spinster, Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator details the strange circumstances of Emily’s life and her odd relationships with her father who controlled and manipulated her, her lover Homer Barron, the townspeople of Jefferson who gossip about her, and her horrible secret. In her upstairs room, she hides Barron’s corpse, which explains the horrid stench that emits from Miss Emily’s house. The story’s subtle complexities continue to inspire critics while casual readers find it one of Faulkner’s most accessible works. The popularity of the story is due in no small part to its gruesome ending. The story explores many themes, including the society of the South at that time, the role of women in the South, and extreme psychosis.
In the story, the townspeople’s points of views on Emily actually reflect the society’s value at that moment to some extent. Although the townspeople don’t have direct contact with Emily, their views on her and her family greatly affect her life. Their praises and admiration influence her father to keep her sheltered longer than she actually needs to be. Her father controls her thoughts and lifestyle. Emily feels that she is released when her father is dead. She dives into love with Homer and neglects people’s judgments on her. When she realizes that Homer intends to leave her again, she makes sure that he would always be with her, whether he is alive or not. In his death Emily finds eternal love which is something no one could ever take away from her.
A famous quote about Emily and her father:
We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn’t have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.
Vade Mecum 